Setting up your Facebook Account

Facebook Tutorial: How to Create a Facebook ProfileAll Facebook walks you through the basic steps to create your Facebook Account. Some of the screen shots are out of date, but that’s to be expected … you will have to get used to Facebook changing its screens every couple of weeks.

Facebook 101 for Business: Your Complete Guide Mari Smith gets you started with reviewing your profile, making a friends list, and adjusting your privacy settings. Then she dives into looking at Facebook Pages. This is a great overview post on Social Media Examiner.

Set up “Login Approvals” 2-step account security on Facebook? Concerned about someone swiping your password while you are surfing Facebook at Starbucks? Ask Dave Taylor outlines how to use Facebook’s login approvals, which require an additional numeric code only when you try to log in to your account from a computer that Facebook’s never seen you use before.

R.I.P. 3 Ways Facebook is Killing Your Website Another great post by Jay Baer where he drives home the need for Facebook. But be careful, as he says, and don’t become what Copyblogger calls a “digital sharecropper” — don’t build your future on rented land.

Setting up your Facebook Page

20 Examples of Great Facebook Pages If you are looking for inspiration, Hubspot provides plenty with these Facebook Pages. These are big brands with big budgets, but it doesn’t hurt to take a look.

How to Set Up a Facebook Page Laura Drell takes you by the hand and leads you through the Page set up process on the American Express Open Forum. You will find lots of good screenshots so that you know you are on the right track.

How To Set Up The Vanity Url For Your Facebook Fan Page Once you get 25 “Likes” on your Facebook Page, you need to go out and grab a custom URL for your Facebook Page. Your URL will be easier to remember, branded to your company, and much shorter! Nicole Simone of Cruel to Be Kind shows you how.

Why I Don’t Like Your Brand on Facebook My favorite quote from this guest post by Andrew Blakeley on Brian Solis’ blog is: “This morning my yoghurt told me to find it on Facebook. It didn’t tell me why, it just told me to find it. Why on Earth would I want to find a yoghurt on Facebook? It’s a yoghurt!” Give people a reason to Like you.

Setting up a Welcome Page

How To Build A Facebook Landing Page With iFrames Francisco Rosales from Social Mouths takes you by the hand to help you create your very own Facebook iFrame application. This is not for the faint of heart, since you will have to become a verified Facebook Developer and design your own web page. Don’t worry, though … Francisco makes it easy.

How to Add the Wildfire iFrame Application to Your Facebook Page If you don’t want to create a custom application yourself for your Welcome Page, there are lots of third-party applications that make adding a Welcome Page easy. All you need is some graphics and you can have a custom page installed in minutes. I show you how in this post.

3 Tools to Create New Facebook iFrame Pages Paul Chaney of Practical eCommerce covers three of my favorite third-party iFrame applications: Wildfire, Involver and Static HTML: iframe tabs. All very easy to use and allow either a graphic or HTML code to create your Welcome Page.

Facebook Groups

Facebook Groups vs. Facebook Pages – Which Is Best? Great post by Mari Smith on the differences between using a Facebook Group for your business or a Facebook Page. She suggests using both, but I believe the Facebook Page is the better choice if you are going to pick one. Facebook Groups are nice for some things but the Page has more advantages.

Facebook Events

HOW TO: Organize an Event on Facebook Creating a Facebook Event can be a great way to get the word out about your open house, sale, book signing or other business event. Josh Catone takes you through the steps. Note that the Message guests feature is not available now when you create your event on your Facebook Page.

10 Facebook Events Gone Wrong Just be careful when you create your event that you are prepared for the viral nature of Facebook. Julius Solaris outlines 10 Facebook disasters. Most of them involved free booze.

Facebook Mobile with Places and Deals

New Data: 33% of Facebook Posting is Mobile Dan Zarrella is a social media scientist. I don’t know if he’s mad, but he sure has good data. Facebook Mobile usage is increasing, which is a good reason to use Places and Deals to your advantage.

A Field Guide to Using Facebook Places If you have an actual physical storefront, you may want to consider setting up a Facebook Place where people can check in. Mashable gives you the big picture.

Facebook Deals Review Facebook Deals were touted as the “Groupon-killer” by many blogs and news outlets when Facebook officially launched the Deals service in April. So far, so good … for Groupon. But don’t count Deals out; Ignite Social Media shows what Deals look like and where they live on Facebook.

Introducing Deals Facebook’s own blog gives a very good overview of how to use the new Deals features.

Adding Facebook Applications

Add YouTube to Your Facebook Page Laura Roeder shows you how easy it is to add your YouTube channel to your Facebook Page. There are several YouTube applications out there, but she demonstrates the best one in her video: the Involver application.

NetworkedBlogs is the App of Choice for Bloggers Denise Wakeman of Build a Better Blog did an informal poll and found that most bloggers use NetworkedBlogs to automatically import their blogs posts. I do like it for automation, but Facebook hides some of the automated posts that come in from NetworkedBlogs in the News Feed. So manually posting your blog post is better in the long run.

Appbistro It can be challenging to find the right app to use since Facebook’s own search function is not that hot. Appbistro is a good place to find apps that can help.

Big Companies on Facebook

The 15 Most Popular Brands On Facebook Number of fans is not the only thing that matters — it’s also how engaged they are. Business Insider takes a look at the numbers for the top 15 brands.

26 Facebook Fan Page Examples in Detail Over on the Ignite Social Media Blog, Lisa Braziel is dissecting 26 big brands on Facebook to show you exactly what they are doing. Follow this series of posts for some great ideas.

B-to-B Companies on Facebook

10 Examples of B2B Facebook Fan Pages Business-to-business can be a little trickier on Facebook. You are searching for a more specific niche audience. In Social Media B2B, Jeffery Cohen gives examples of companies that are doing well (kudos to the updated numbers).

Are You Asking The Wrong Questions On Facebook? Amy Porterfield shares that the best way to create engagement on Facebook is to ask interesting, thought-provoking questions. She tells us how to make sure we are not asking the wrong questions.

Make Your Facebook Page Posts Count How do you attract people to interact with your posts? John Porcaro not only gives a great list of best practices such as keeping it short, adding a link and delivering value but he also shows some concrete examples of posts that catch his eye.

The How-To Guide For Facebook Advertising If you use Facebook ads, make sure you are identifying your goals, understanding the cost structure and measuring your results. Anthony Piwarun gives the low-down on these steps in a guest post on Social Media Explorer.

Guide to Facebook Ads Facebook would like to encourage you to spend money with them in this comprehensive overview of how Facebook Ads works. Tongue-in-cheek aside, it’s a good guide to all the pieces of the ad campaign.

Facebook ROI

Facebook Marketing ROI: 3 Case Studies Brian Carter shows us in his Search Engine Journal post three small business examples of how Facebook Ads generated at least 300% ROI and higher for these cases.

How to use Google Analytics to measure Facebook ROI In this video, John Haydon takes you through Google Analytics to determine your ROI. I like the tip at the end where he tells you to have a unique page on your website that only serves Facebook. That will make your tracking much easier!

10 Measures of Social Media ROI for Your Brand Neil Glassman on the Social Times site urges us not to declare our success based on readily available metrics (such as Likes), but to focus on the metrics that are truly relevant to our business. Good advice.

EdgeRank Checker An unofficial tool to check your EdgeRank and see how likely it is that you are appearing in the Top News. My favorite part of the tool is how it tells you what days are best for you — make sure you save your best announcements for those days.

How to use Facebook insights to identify core supporters John Haydon goes through the steps to using Facebook insights in a meaningful way in this YouTube video. He mentions in the video that the insights he is covering aren’t available for Pages with less than 10,000 fans, but that has changed and the stats he covers are now available.